Andrew Ng – Founder of Coursera and Google Brain is now working in AI for Manufacturing

Andrew Ng is a well-known computer scientist, executive, investor, and entrepreneur in the field of Artificial Intelligence and Deep Learning. As a pioneer in the field of online learning, he co-founded Coursera and deeplearning.ai, an online curriculum for learning AI and Deep Learning.

Life

Andrew Ng was born in London. His parents were from Hong Kong. In 1992, Andrew graduated from Raffles Institution in Singapore. He received his undergraduate degree in Computer Science in 1997, from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Ng earned his master’s degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1998 and received his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley in 2002. He started working at Stanford University in 2002 and currently lives in Los Altos Hills, California.

Career

Ng started his career as a professor at Stanford University Department of Computer Science and Department of Electrical Engineering. Later, he became the Director of the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Lab. Here, he taught students and conducted research related to data mining and machine learning. His deep learning course at Stanford is very popular and has over 1000 students enrolled.

From 2011 to 2012, he worked at Google, where he founded and was the director of Google
Brain Deep Learning Project. In 2012, he co-founded and was CEO of Coursera which offers free online courses for everyone after over 100,000 students registered for Ng’s popular course. Today, several million people have taken Ng’s popular online course.
In 2014, he joined Baidu as Chief Scientist where he carried out research related to big data and A.I. In March 2017, he announced his resignation from Baidu and

“Deep Learning is a superpower. With it you can make a computer see, synthesize novel art, translate languages, render a medical diagnosis, or build pieces of a car that can drive itself. If that isn’t a superpower, I don’t know what is.” — Andrew Ng

launched Deeplearning.ai, an online curriculum of classes. Then Ng launched Landing.ai, bringing AI to manufacturing factories. Landing.ai’s first public partnership is with Foxconn.

In November 2017, Ng was the keynote speaker at AI Frontiers Conference.
In January 2018, Ng unveiled the AI Fund, raising $175 million to invest in new startups. He is also the chairman of Woebot and on the board of drive.ai.

Achievements in Tech Space

Ng co-founded and led Google Brain

He was a former VP & Chief Scientist at Baidu, building the company’s Artificial
Intelligence Group into several thousand people.

He is an adjunct professor (formerly an associate professor and Director of the AI Lab) at Stanford University.

Ng also co-founded Coursera in 2012, deeplearning.ai in March 2017, and landing.ai in December 2017.

He launched and heads AI Fund, a $175 million investment fund to back Artificial
Intelligence startups.

He also wrote a book “Machine Learning Yearning”, a practical guide for those
interested in machine learning.

In December 2018, he wrote the AI Transformation Playbook.

Focus on AI in Manufacturing

Andrew Ng believes “AI is the new electricity.” However, very few industries can successfully adopt AI — especially the manufacturing industry, which is extremely slow in adopting new technologies. In December 2017, Andrew Ng launched Landing.ai, which is designed to accelerate AI’s implementation in manufacturing.

AI technology is complex and is still in the nascent stages. Outside the IT industry, no other company has the manpower or capability to implement AI. For AI to make a significant impact, it must be integrated into everything from data acquisition, to organizational structure design. There are plenty of challenges and Landing.ai aims to address these challenges and make it easy for the organizations to adapt AI.

Landing.ai is initially focusing on manufacturing industry and is keen on addressing issues such as variable quality and yield, inflexible production line design, inability to manage capacity, and rising production costs. AI can transform manufacturing industry completely. For example, a smart AI-powered machine can not only run on its own but can also inspect and repair itself. It can order the spare parts needed for a planned maintenance schedule, increase or decrease production based on orders received, all without any human intervention.

AI feeds on data. As more and more, smart machines are connected to each other and to the server; an enormous amount of data will be generated. Machine learning algorithms can be trained and further refined using this data to make those machines even smarter.

Eventually, AI will enable

Adaptive manufacturing

Automated quality control

Predictive maintenance

This is an exciting era for manufacturing and we are on the verge of a complete makeover of the industry. Soon, manufacturers will be looking for workers who understand AI technologies such as deep learning models and know how to use the AI-powered machines. Factories of the future will be completely automated with very few human workers.

Therefore, the current workforce will need to be retrained. Landing.ai has recently started
working with manufacturers around the globe to jointly develop and deploy AI solutions for automated factories and training the workforce globally.

Summary

Andrew Ng is on a mission to build an AI-powered society. He believes that our physical needs, health care, transportation, food, and lodging can be made more accessible through AI.

“For the whole world to experience the benefits of AI, it must pervade many industries, not just the IT industry”, says Andrew.

Future of manufacturing is looking very promising under the able
the leadership of such a visionary as Andrew Ng.